


Punch, Drunk, Love

by IrreWilderer



Series: “L’habit ne fait pas le moine” [5]
Category: The Outer Worlds (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Bar Fight, Dancing, Drinking, Drunkenness, F/M, Fluff, Kissing, look ma -- no lemons, metaphysical talky-talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 20:22:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21584773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrreWilderer/pseuds/IrreWilderer
Summary: Drinks, dancing, and an understanding.
Relationships: The Captain/Maximillian DeSoto, The Captain/Vicar Maximillian DeSoto
Series: “L’habit ne fait pas le moine” [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1540777
Comments: 15
Kudos: 63





	Punch, Drunk, Love

Standing at The Lost Hope bar, swimming in comfortable thoughts stirred up by a successive round of lagers and hooch, Archie swayed softly to the music. It wasn’t the specific foot-stomper pouring from the piano that had her affected—it was something she heard in the harmonies, or tune. It reminded her of a song from home, which reminded her of a dive joint she’d been in, and, although she didn’t miss the bar, or much of Earth, she would readily admit that ‘back home’ had the better drinks.

“Respects, ma’am.” A voice came up behind her, and was soon joined by the body to which it were engaged. “Might I treat a lady?”

Glancing the stranger over, Archie grinned sloppily at his face (none too bad), snorted at his boldness (he was easily 15 years younger), then shrugged at his presumptions. “I’m actually waiting on a few anti-fogmatics for my crew. Welcome to provide for the next round, though.”

“Figures a fine-looker like yourself wouldn’t be kept lonesome.” Closing in, the man laid a hand on her hip, which slid along until it was cupping her slacks-cradled bottom. He smelled alright; cleaned, leastways, by a nice smelling soap. “‘Course,” he drawled, “you come with me, and I’ll show you a real shindig.”

Archie whispered breathily, “I keep my money in my other pocket.”

The cash-hungry Casanova shuffled off, cursing all get-out, leaving Archie to collect her drink-tray and wobble back to their table.

Vociferously, Ellie and the vicar were spattin’. Ellie and the vicar were _always_ spattin’. Jessie Doyle, their impromptu host for the evening, sat bemused of their bickering, finishing a beer, and nodding as Archie returned.

Clunking down the tray, the Unreliable’s captain plunked down, too, taking her whiskey-and-whatever as the others prorated their variously-mixed potations.

“Was there any change?” Jessie asked of the bit cartridge given for her Tripsitout. Archie wobbled to her feet, got to checking her pockets, and turned a little nervous when her feelers weren’t finding what they ought.

“Um… there was, but I—”

“Hm. That’s what I thought.” Jessie shook her head. “The guy trying to get fresh? Sticky Steve? Pickpocket. He’s not… actually that good, though.” Smirking, she sipped her drink, peeking over the top of it. “Says something about you, I guess. Not sure what, but… _something_.”

Pushing himself up, Max stood staring towards the exit with one hand supporting himself on the table. “We should search out this delinquent! Every bit counts if we are to make it to Monarch.”

“Which is why we’re drinking away three bits a bottle,” Ellie needled. Sitting beside the vicar gave her ample opportunity to playfully smack at his hip. “C’mon, Vicky. You can hardly stand. Think you can walk, too? ‘Cuz finding means walking.”

“I am more than capable of putting one foot behind the other, Miss Fenhill.”

“Yeah? Isn’t that moonwalking?”

They were off in a huddle: Max, Ellie, Jessie, and Archie. Their tawdry, tottering party might’ve been teamier had Felix not escorted Parvati back to the Unreliable about an hour prior, but, as it stood (and that was not very well), it was down to the sawbones, the captain, and the vicar to defend their ship’s slighted honor. Or, at least, its lighted purse.

The Unreliable’s crew (featuring tag-along Jessie Doyle) made a laughable sight. With the vicar heading the party—his plastered, peering eye inspecting every passer-by—the rest of them kept bumping into him as he suddenly halted his step to investigate. It was a slow haul through the Groundbreaker; methodical, almost, except the ‘mostly drunk’ part.

“Like a dog with a bone,” Ellie commented of Max, her voice cracking more than usual. “Hate to see how far he’d go to get someone he **really** hated.”

At last, Jessie identified Steve as the _‘hey_ — _he’s over there’_ guy in front of a general-goods booth, chatting with the merchant, and pointing at things here and yonder about the shelves.

Coming to his side seemed the victory of a long-fought battle. As a means of gaining his attention, Max grabbed the man’s shoulder. And, when Sticky Steve turned towards them, Max kept his attention by smashing a fist into the man’s face with all his mustered, rabid might.

_“Whoa!”_

The rest of the group collectively clapped hands over their perplexed pie-holes at the sound of skin on skin. With Steve’s collar clenched in his fist, Max ruthlessly went to walloping, the vicar’s cheeks flushed with fury, his lips a superior sneer. Ellie and Jessie tried curbing the fracas by grabbing at the Max’s arms, but they were flung off. They attempted the gentler path, too—a dozen _“don’t”s_ and _“c’mon, man”s_ —but were equally unsuccessful. Ellie yelled at Archie to stop him, but Archie just stared.

After two minutes of pummeling, Max shoved Steve to the ground in a last act of aggression. At a lately-arrived Mardet’s suggestion, the crew traipsed off, Jessie parading her own way, while Ellie and Archie bore the vicar back to the Unreliable.

Alone, Archie managed the man to his room. After which, she managed herself a tall, black whiskey bottle from his cabinet. Working the top, she settled beside Max on the bed, pressing the drink to her lips.

She swallowed just in time to snort laughingly. “Remember Parvati’s face after that first shot?”

Max’s head was resting back against the wall, eyes softly closed. “I recommended she employ caution,” the man recalled. “That is what happens when one so readily dismisses my invaluable council.”

Archie tapped him with the bottle, and he took it into hand.

Sitting, sipping; sighing: the silence was as warm as the room. Much of the evening had been as such, and Archie remembered something Parvati had said—something about the crew living easy together in a quiet place. The captain’s besotted mind sunk into the idea like a body in a bath. _Law_ , to be so comfortable. The notion made her hopeful.

“I mean, it’ll be fine,” Archie argued, finishing a conversation no one else was having. “How bad could it be?”

“How bad could **what** be?” Max echoed, taking a sip.

“Not Stellar Bay. The other… bay. Landing… wherever. On Monarch. So what if we don’t have the money?”

Max huffed. Handing her the hooch, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “No employment, no pay grade; no tangible contribution to the Grand Plan. How proud my parents would be.”

“It’ll work out,” Archie assured them. “We make landfall in Monarch, and it’ll all work out.”

Their spirits-swilling had Max’s brow scrunched in his scrutinizing of her. “Is that optimism, or faith?”

“Wish it _were_ faith,” Archie admitted readily. “Most days? Wouldn’t mind a system placating me.”

The vicar took a deep, conceding breath. “That is... surprising. You always appear entirely confident in your chaos and random occurrences.”

“It’s not _random_.” Archie leaned harder against his arm. “Nothing’s _random_. But it also ain’t cosmically clinched, neither. See, it’s karma. Nice things for nice people, and clodhoppers get their inevitable comeuppance.”

As usual, annoyance strained his eloquence. “That is the—!” Clearing his throat, Max tried again. “In the interest of discourse, let us explore that avenue of thought, shall we? **_I_** , for example, am reasonably agreeable, considering what I am often forced to suffer. And where did I end up? Assigned to a void-blasted prison. After which I landed myself in a second prison—only, one that reeked of saltuna instead, and answered to the name of ‘Edgewater.’”

Lips on the whiskey, said before taking a sip, Archie remarked, “well, maybe you ain’t actually that nice.”

“In that case, what of you, Captain Quaice?” Max leered at her, similarly smug. “You are so ‘nice’ that we have become irredeemably stuck on this do-nothing port. Where, pray tell, is your karma now?”

Archie needed only half-feign her stupefying. “Why, Mr. DeSoto, were that flattery? Are you saying that **I** —a lay-about lacking work ethic—am _nice_?”

“I find you to have have a remarkable disposition,” Max answered. “Aside from your inability to accept the indisputable Truth.”

That notion had her fixing to move. Fighting through a firewater-fogged mind and frightfully heavy limbs, she righted on her feet, staggering slight. Staggering turned to gladsome swinging, and then Archie was twisting to the tune she’d heard before; the memory of Earth-song that pulled at heartstrings, and leg strings, and arms, making her dance as it willed; a puppet of the old days.

“Max,” Archie called luringly, extending a hand as her hips rocked. “Maximillian... “

“You, my good captain, are inebriate.”

“ _Mm-hmm._ ” She grinned stupidly. “Come on.”

He heeded the pull of her outstretched palm. Fumbling a hand into his, situating another on his shoulder, Archie leaned against the vicar, swaying to a soundless song.

“Is this… Are we _dancing_?”

Humming happily, she nodded. “Don’t miss much from home, I’ll admit. Proper coffee, mayhaps. For sure the conspicuous lack of pistol-packing. But dancing, _Law_ , do I miss the dancing.” Her blood warmed. “Dance hall every Saturday night in your best duds; shaking a leg ‘til sunrise. Bad drinks but good people to be found at the dance hall. If only you could have—” Archie sighed. “They started closing up near ‘bouts when I left. Something about needing the space. Repurposed to factories, I expect.”

“Edgewater held the occasional social years back,” Max recalled conversationally as his grip settled snug at her waist. “Dozens of workers cavorting to corporate jingles in the town square; singing company logos like ancient psalms. Good for morale, as I understand it.”

Moving with him, Archie fell to new forms of euphoria. It wasn’t simply the welcoming warmth of whom she was wrapped around, but it was the independence; the action of legs and mind vested in else than company policy. Such self-determination was what she’d been dogging those deep, dark nights at the dance hall: to have that choice; that _right_. Oftentimes it had amount to so little—being only a meagre means of mutiny against the machine of business—but sometimes it had been everything. Right now, it felt like everything.

“If we are to do this, then perhaps we should do this proper.” Dispersing spellbound thoughts, the vicar approached the cabinet. Unseen fiddling followed—clicks and clacks of mechanical workings echoed through the room—after which a low melody timbred forth, whining, weeping, terrible, but wondrous.

“What is..?”

He took her hand. He took her waist. They swayed anew, Archie plumb mesmerized by the petite gramophone hymning its heart’s haunting contents.

“Max, it’s… It’s beautiful.”

“Thank you. I came by it years ago. A real curiosity. I am told they are common in Byzantium, however.”

She clung to him. Nostalgia and alcohol conspiring in secret bodily places had her bowled and breathless. Archie had accepted that this melody-bought bliss was the property of memories—she’d never figured on regaining the few joys of her past—but, now…

“We could have this,” she said, nuzzling at his chest, swept up in sentiment.

“What do you mean?”

 _“This.”_ Archie gazed into his face. “Instead of perpetual dust-ups, ‘n carping like tomcats. We could have this. Here.”

Max frowned. “Is that all we have, captain? ‘Dust-ups’, as you call it? What of comradery in the field? The late-night technical conversations regarding computational systems? As for our intellectual arguments, I…” He held harder at her waist. “In Edgewater, I yearned for conversations such as we have.”

Brow furrowing at finding some lick of truth, Archie closed her eyes. His rebuttal became like a bridge in her mind: connecting wayward ideas consumed by a darkness cast by drink.

“Yeah, I—yeah.” She shook her head, sobering slightly. “Of course we do more than argue. And the bickering ain’t so badly. Not like a call-for-order comes to nothing; not like your system is **all** rotten. But, it’s... it’s the messiness of it that vexes me.” Archie implored him. “Karma? That’s clean. Good for good; bad for the crooks. But _your_ lot? It specificates that a body deserves where they’re at until it don’t. The Board; the Plan...”

“Are not interchangeable constructs whose differences are to be disregarded casually, Captain Quaice,” clarified the vicar, taking the lead and swinging her round. “And it is not about _who_ may be deserving. Such an arbitrary system as self-worth has no bearing on the Grand Plan. Crass though it may seem, once we fully decode the Universal Equation, we will understand the why of it.”

Archie frowned. “Then... everyone is where they ought. Indisputably. Without… disputin’. Even those hurting.”

“Or, put another way, those who are hurting are simply those who dispute their role.”

While Archie had experienced a pinch of pity, the man appeared the picture of gloom. The bags at his eyes darkened; his lips pressed thin. Staring off into empty space, he added, “believe me, I am well aware of this truth: those who question their part are doomed to misery.”

And she did: she believed him. She believed that Maximillian DeSoto was melancholic at having come to his place in the Equation by deviant means. He had fought the trade of his family; left laboring for a spiritual nourishment that he need beg for. She believed this struggle left a hole in his heart, and that he compensated by overprotecting his pride with fisticuffs and confrontation. Archie believed that Max required the Universal Equation to grant permission for being as he had chosen, and Archie believed, above all else, that Max insisted so hard in his faith because he felt desperately empty.

She also believed that she didn’t have a role. “I don’t have a role,” Archie said.

He pulled her close. “Not an obvious one, no.” His breath was warm in her hair. “But perhaps your place in the Grand Plan is greater than you recognize. For example, perhaps your actions in Edgewater were as they should be: cutting off a dying limb that was found to be poisoning the body.”

“Do you really think that?”

Max sighed. “No. **_I_ ** believe that you made a rash decision based on Philosophist-leaning views. But, as is abundantly clear—as I have not yet cracked the Equation—I do not know everything.”

“And what if in Edgewater… What if Adelaide’s people thrive? She can grow things; she can illustrate to others how to do as such. Adelaide could shape a huge, rolling garden full of fruit, and vegetables, and… nuts, I s’pose.”

“If Miss McDevitt manages it, then she was meant to.”

Archie said nothing.

After a long moment, Max pulled back, giving room to read her face.

“Now: my question, if you’ll indulge me. How does your karma account for what took place in Edgewater?”

Archie blinked. The darksome room had the vicar’s hazel stare dimmed to brown. It had taken lines from his face, smoothing his skin; making him young. There weren’t a trace of skepticism about his mein, either by design or by drink, meaning Vicar Max was caught by curiosity rather than cruelty.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “Edgewater seemed to be a den of folk living as well they could. Now they can live better not needing to bend to quotas.”

Max turned them, casting their steps in a new direction. “And those who chose not to support Miss McDevitt’s deserters—what of them? When the marauders descend, or their food-stores spoil: will their suffering be karma’s reward for loyalty to the only way of life they have ever known?”

Archie stilled. It was effortful to figure on which she was more tired of: the accuracy, or his insistence at extracting some pseudo-confession.

“Void damn it,” she cussed. “That ain’t fair.” 

“You were the one seeking spiritual council,” Max reminded. “And understanding without pain is a rarity.” 

“ _Pain?_ ” Archie’s jaw dropped. “You want talkin’ about—?”

Loud; abrupt: Felix was laughing outside. A side-splitter had him pealing echoes through the door, papering-over the gramophone’s playing. This free, effusive burst was a distraction—a momentary reprieve—but then Archie’s chest returned to pounding, and to wrenching, and to pushing her heart out her throat with spiteful persistence.

She remembered his face. Contorted; terrified; purple with pain. Begging for leniency with his wailing, and asking for mercy at his mouth. His eyes rolled; his blood spilled.

Staring at Max, Archie got steamed.

_“You shouldn’t have beaten that man.”_

Dancing dying fast, their stare-off seemed a square-off.

“If you felt that way, why did you not intervene?”

“I don’t like to be thought to swaying folk. I won’t… abscond with a person’s choice. As a free-thinking, free-doin’ man, it was your right to act as you willed. That I’m your captain does **not** make me your boss.”

Max’s posture stiffened. “If that is the case, then I stand by the decision whole-heartedly. He should not have misappropriated the money required for our mission. And he most certainly should not have thought to touch you.”

The alcohol had everything so big; so out-and-out important. Each glance; every sentiment. Even now: the way Max smelled of whiskey and spiced cologne and appeared gentle in the light-glow—it was exaggerated; not accurate; not _real_. The vicar pretended at softness with preaching, poetry, and poise, but a small scratch sluffed the gleam. He was fire. He was unforgiving. 

And his face was drawing nearer, now.

Archie swallowed. “Those aren’t the same. Taking our money; touching me. Which was it, vicar?”

Max half-smiled. “It could have been both.”

“But was it?”

“...No.”

The vicar was inspired towards specific purpose. Capturing Archie’s bottom lip between his, Max groaned before wrapping his arms around her, a hand at her waist, one cradling her head, coiling and holding like need itself. 

A lick of electric chaos quickened in Archie’s stomach; Max’s tongue had ran along the seal of her mouth. She gasped, tasting his hot, oak-tinged breath, and in response Max suckled at her lips, nibbling between gruff moans and smothered exhales. He tilted his head; he kissed her deeper. As Archie’s stiff, overwhelmed frame was about to find life—about to scrabble at his chest, matching his craving for closeness—Max made a single plea, the sound like liquid, spoken silk. “Archimedes…”

Knees faltered; fingers locked. But her name brought reality to port. Shaking her head, Archie pushed him back.

“Max, _no._ ” 

His brow shot up. “No?”

“We’re…” Fidgeting, exhilarated, her arms crossed at her chest and then fell away. “We’re three sheets in the wind. We’re in our cups. We’re _drunk_.”

“More than half-a-dozen watered-down cocktails—and a few swills of Iceberg Aged Whiskey—are required to fully impair **my** judgement. And I have seen you pop as many pills as a dispensary and _still_ make more sense than the rest of this crew.” Max took a step forward. “What is it really, Archimedes?”

As one knows the skeleton in their closet, Archie understood the answer. But bones was what it was; dry bones; a foreboding body to be forgotten.

“It’s that,” she lied. “It’s only that… We’re—we’ve been...”

Max had stolen close. He lightly clasped her wrist: a weak imitation of taking her hand. “It is not the drink driving me to you. Your support—your understanding—it is… It is difficult to describe what it means to me.”

He ducked in once more, attempting to explain with dutiful deference paid to her lips. He kissed apologies; worked sorries across her mouth; expressed more sincerity between his little sighs than anything so far said. His skin was hot and scent familiar as Archie barely pulled away, moaning in protest of her own principles.

The vicar’s grip caught at her hand. Before releasing, his expression sagged in sorrow.

“You shouldn’t have beaten that man,” Archie repeated louder than before.

“It was, as you claimed, my choice, was it not?”

“Yes.” Archie swallowed. “But it scared me.”

With a deadened gaze, the vicar stepped back.

Announcing _“I’m going to hoof it”_ as though it weren’t apparent by her ambulating out the door, Archie beat feet, the gramophone’s song bleating at her back.

Making for her bunk, the Unreliable’s captain swiped at bottles, and pawed at packets, swallowing and swilling enough drugs to let her forget—before passing out in a cloud of bliss—all but the feel of the vicar’s lips.

“Max…” She wanted to go back to him, but her body was falling away. _"Max._


End file.
